Carali McCall - Circle Drawing / short clip from a documentary film introducing the work made in New Orleans 2019
'Circle Drawing' is a series of large-scale artworks made with graphite on paper in front of a live audience drawing one continuous line (in the shape of a circle) at my full arm's length until exhaustion, or the graphite stick drops from the grasp of my hand; most performances endure 2hrs - 4hrs of constant drawing; each artwork becomes a battle between keeping going and the action and my materials; each artwork is titled by its duration and depending on situations and conditions and thresholds of endurance, some drawings have rips and some with blood.
​
This performance-based practice began in 2004 while an art graduate at UofT in Canada. In 2007 the work became the foundation for my research into 'Performance Drawing' and my Ph.D. thesis. In 2018, an addition to the series was made using metal and pigment treating the surface of the paper before drawing.
A series of mid-sized, lithographs and cutting and layering several drawings together also follow this initial circle drawing concept.